This is the Lazy Daisy block designed by Amy Gay of Butterfly Angels Quilts. It is a free foundation pieced pattern that I thought would make a great block for a Sewing Bee that I am currently involved in with the DC Modern Quilt Guild. This is the first time that I’ve joined a Sewing Bee. 5 of us have been grouped together and each month one of us asks the other 4 to sew up a few blocks using the pattern and fabric selection of our choice. We can provide fabric or ask for the others to sew from their stash. My hive will be sewing for me in February.

If you are making a block for me, either because you’re in my hive, or just because you’re my friend and know I would love to have a block from you, please read through this entire post before starting. I’d like to make sewing this block as simple as possible and I hope the info and photos here will save you some time. Thank you in advance!!

My fabric selection

I am going to ask for white or light cream solids or low volume prints for the daisy petals. I would like blue sky colored fabric for the background and prefer solids, or like-solids, although I can see how some prints might work well too – I just don’t seem to have them in my own stash. I would like these to be any value of a blue you could imagine in the sky. True blues, even navy but not aqua or turquoise. Finally, I would like the centers to be yellow and/or gold.

A word about paper: I like to use Carol Doak’s Foundation Paper. It is a thin paper that you can somewhat see through that tears away easily when you are done.

This pattern consists of 1 title page and 4 pattern pages. The only directions are what is printed on the title page as the “sewing order”. After making up the block myself, I thought it would be helpful to my bee-mates to have more instruction. I found the block easy to sew once I figured out a few logistics. The petals are each pieced separately and then joined together.

The first step was to rough cut around each of the paper pieces. Petal D has to be taped together. I went ahead and precut my fabric into the following size pieces:

Each petal piece (A thru H) starts with a white fabric strip glued onto the back side of the paper. The wrong side of the fabric is glued to the wrong side of the paper. I used an Elmer’s purple washable glue stick which worked like a dream. It goes on purple but dries clear. It holds the fabric to the paper through all the sewing and trimming but peels right off at the end.

Put a good amount of glue onto the back of the paper where the white fabric strip will be placed and then . . .

. . . glue the wrong side of the white fabric piece to it. Cover the whole A1 area.

I like to make a crease where the sewing line is going to be. (Between A1 and A2 in this example)

Place a blue fabric piece (right sides together) over that crease such that when sewn and ironed in place, it will cover A2 on the paper.

I shortened my sewing stitch to 2.0 and sewed as shown. I sewed through the marked seam allowance and I did sew just one stitch into A3.

Leaving the fabric exactly as sewn, fold the paper only back along the stitching line and trim to a 1/4″ seam allowance. Now you can iron the blue fabric into place.

Crease along the next sewing line

Place the next blue piece

Sew the line between A2 and A3

This shows what the right side looks like after sewing

Again, leaving the fabric as sewn, fold back the paper only along the stitching line and time leaving 1/4″ seam allowance.

Press the blue piece back into place

Now trim along all of the dotted lines on the paper

Right side of trimmed piece

Once the A & B petals have been pieced and trimmed, they can be sewn together. Glue the yellow fabric to the paper piece C1, trim it and then sew this onto the AB piece.

I like to line up each of 2 pieces that are going to be sewn together by placing them right sides together and then inserting a pin through the ends of the seam lines to make sure they are exactly lined up correctly. I did not get a photo of this.

Also – you do have to make sure you are joining the pieces along the correct seam line. The photo above shows the correct orientation of these 3 pieces. A is on the bottom when looking at this from the right side. B is on top in this photo.

Repeat the process with D-E-F and G-H-I and then join them together. (see note below about removing paper from seam allowances after sewing)

I did remove the paper from the narrow seam allowances after sewing and pressed those seam allowances open to help the block lay flatter. I removed the paper from the seam allowance of A & B before sewing C to it, etc.

If you are in my hive, I would like to supply you with the printed papers for 2 blocks and a glue stick. If I do not see you at an upcoming meeting, I will mail these to you. Please leave the paper in place when you return the blocks to me. I will remove it when I sew the quilt together.

If you are not in my bee but are willing to make a block for my quilt, I would be absolutely overjoyed to have more blocks! I can also provide you with the papers and glue if you ask me or you can use your own.

I wanted to make a zippered pouch with Hillary Clinton’s “I’m with her” logo on it. My friend, Dana, had made and posted some she made on Instagram (danaandthread).

Aren’t they great? I love these! She made hers using the block instructions from Maritza Soto (sotosewn on IG) who has a free pattern on Craftsy. The directions are for a 15 x 18″ block and reducing it didn’t seem to be a simple matter (for me) and so I decided to try to paper piece it in a smaller size.

Template for 8.5 x 9.5″ block. Obviously the finished size could be altered by the width of the outside pieces (#2, 4, 11, 12, 13).

You can download this template by clicking here: I’m with her. I made mine using freezer paper piecing. I printed the template on freezer paper and cut it apart. (Note that there is a 1″ mark in the center of piece #10 to be sure it printed to scale.)

Templates ironed onto the wrong side of my fabrics

Templates held right sides together, ready to be sewn right along the paper template.

Sewn and pressed toward the darker fabric.

Pieces #1 – 5 were the only “tricky” pieces to align.

I used registration marks on the paper to help line them up for sewing (note the red and blue marks). Although I did piece this one entire block using the paper templates for the purposes of this tutorial, pieces 6 thru 13 could be cut & sewn in a conventional manner. Pieces 6 -9 are 2″ square finished or 2.5″ square unfinished, etc.

Above is a flipagram showing how the block went together. This was a fun and easy way to make this block.

Finished pouches

Do you have an even easier way to make up this block? Let me know in the comments.

To make the top, I traced around a favorite T shirt that I owned. I used a folded knit band to finish the neckline and sewed it down with a decorative stitch incorporating small little chop beads as I went.

All of the seams were hand sewn using a regular running stitch and then felled to one side also with a running stitch.

Practice samples

Fun beads and sequins from Alabama Chanin

I made this shirt specifically to wear with the Alabama Chanin skirt I am currently sewing. I guess I had better get going on that!

1 of 4 skirt panels. This is a double layer of knit that has been stenciled and then “quilted” together and the top cut away to expose the underneath layer.

Notes to self (or anyone else who’s interested):

I used 2 layers of cotton knit on the front of this shirt and only one layer for the back and sleeves. I thought I might do some reverse appliqué on the front but put the bottom layer of knit with the right side towards the inside of the shirt. I could probably still cut and expose the layer with the wrong side showing, but it would bother me. Next time put both right sides facing the same way as I did with the skirt.

I found the directions for Creating Mitered Binding for a V-neck in the book Alabama Studio Sewing Patterns on page 22.

Directions for garment construction and the stretch stitches are in all of the books.Alabama Studio Sewing + Design has them on pages 24 – 27.

Same book (as#3) has a page of pretty circular stitches – Pg. 81 These are used for a beautiful skirt on page 101 of the Alabama Studio Style book.

Blocks 1 thru 5 are pretty straight forward. Block 6, however, is one of several “theme” blocks the quilt will contain. I chose a “flying geese” theme and found this trail of geese block from Daniel of Piece and Press. It is a foundation pieced block and he says in his post that he used a freezer paper technique to sew it.

I had some freezer paper sheets that are sized for printing. After resizing the block to fit the size I needed for the QAL quilt, I printed it onto the freezer paper sheets and made two red registration marks between each piece. This block only has 9 pieces which I think made it especially suitable for this technique. *The complete trail of geese block contains 6 of these individual blocks – 3 of which are mirror image.

Each template piece was cut out and ironed onto the wrong side of it’s corresponding fabric and then the fabric was cut 1/4″ larger than the template. In this block six of the pieces are background and three are the geese. I numbered the geese (and my fabric) 1 thru 18 in order to have the geese end up in the color order I wanted.

They were arranged back into their block positions and then sewn together in order – the registration marks made it very easy! I placed right sides together and sewed along the paper edge – not through it.

Once done, the paper was simply and easily peeled away. This is so much easier than removing paper from stitching. I’m not sure this technique would work for a more complicated foundation pieced block, but it sure was great for this one!There is a great round-up of foundation piecing tutorials by VeryKerryBerry here.

This was a fun block to sew and I look forward to the upcoming theme blocks during this Quilt Along.

Christmas stocking for my cardiologist husband. (Pattern specifics for both hearts and stocking are at the end of this post)

I did not get this stocking made in time to hang it on the mantel for Christmas. Does having it done by Valentine’s Day count for anything? This was the project I worked on during “Snowzilla” – 24 inches of snow in DC. (It kind of felt like Christmas!)

I marked the sewing lines on all of these squares.

I sewed across all 3 corners without removing from the machine – just pivoted.

Chain piecing made the project go faster.

The finished hearts are very boxy until you sew them together which produces the more rounded looking hearts.

Voila! I now have 2 stockings made. These happen to be for the oldest and youngest members of my family. 5 more to go. Maybe there will be another snow storm!?!

I love to make pillows and give them as gifts. It’s nice if the cover is removable so that it can be washed or changed out. I like to put in a zipper and to cover it with a contrast fabric band. It makes the back look as pretty as the front!

Front

Back

For an 18″ pillow start with:

Pillow Front – this can be a single piece of beautiful fabric or an orphan quilt block or something you sew together specifically for who you are making the pillow for. This pillow front can be quilted or not. If you quilt it, you will want to add batting. If you don’t quilt it, depending on the weight fabric you use, you may want to interface it. For this example the front was cut 18″ x 18″ after quilting.

Pillow Back – I cut the back the same width as the front (18″) and 1 inch longer than the front (19″). 18 wide x 19″ long. I fuse on the same size piece of interfacing (again based on fabric used), and then make a horizontal cut where I want to add the contrast band that will hide the zipper.

Contrast Band – One piece cut 4″ x the width of the pillow. For this pillow: 18″ wide x 4″ long. I also interface this piece if it is quilting cotton weight. (I often use the same fabric that I will edge the pillow with.)

Fabric for edging – 2 strips cut the whole width of the fabric. If I bind the edges of the pillow I cut these strips 2 1/4″ wide. If I am going to insert cording into the edge, I base the width on the size of the cord. Lately I’ve been using 6/32″ cotton filler cord and I cut the strips 1.5″ wide cut on the bias. I sew these 2 strips together using a diagonal join which gives me a single strip that is about 80″ long.

Zipper – A plastic teeth (tooth?) zipper that is longer than the width of the pillow. In this case 20″ or longer.

Pillow form – 18″ pillow form. This will be a little larger than the pillow cover which will make a nicely stuffed pillow.

Fold the contrast band in half lengthwise with wrong sides together. This folded band is now 2″ x 18″.

Zipper placed correctly on band. Zipper face down and extending beyond edges on both sides.

Place the zipper wrong side down along the raw edges of the folded contrast band. The extra length of the zipper should be sticking out on both ends. Baste in place

Now attach the zipper and band to the pillow back top.

Top of pillow back now looks like this.

Add this basted unit to the top piece of the pillow back, align the edges and pin in place. If you pin the way I have in the photo below, it will allow you to then open the zipper to sew this side of the zipper in place.

Place other side of zipper to bottom bottom and pin as shown above.

Sew the bottom of the pillow back to the other side of the zipper. There is no need to baste this side first. The right side of the zipper is sewn to the right side of the pillow back.

Open zipper to make sewing easier.

Zipper back almost done!

This photo shows the zipper hiding under the contrast band.

Move the zipper stop to the middle of the pillow and stitch along both sides.

Trim zipper.

The back is now done. It should be trimmed to the same dimension as the front (18 x 18″). If you are going to bind the edges, the front and back are placed wrong sides together and basted around the edges. The binding is now applied to the edges to finish the raw edges.

Binding on edges

If you are going to insert cording into the edges, cover the cording with bias cut fabric which allows the cording to go around the corners easily. This is sewn onto the right side of the pillow front and then the front and back are sewn together right sides together.

This is an easy project to welcome in the New Year. I bought these tea towels online from Spoonflower. They aren’t actually towels yet in this photo because the fabric edges are raw and fraying. If you click on this Spoonflower link you will see that there are an amazing number of design options and they are all so colorful and fun.

Untrimmed fabric

I made my fabrics into tea towels (described below), but my friend, Anne, made hers into adorable (and reversible) tote bags using this YouTube tutorial by Alanda Craft. The tutorial does not describe using a towel with a one way design such as these calendar towels. To have both sides of the bag facing “right side up”, you have to make a cut down the middle, reposition and sew back together.

Tote bags made from calendar fabric.

All I had to do to make the towels was to trim the edges, iron 1/4″ towards the back once and then again, and then sew in place.

Edge stitch foot – Bernina foot #10

Sewing this edge was made easy with an edge stitch foot and my needle position changed slight to the right of center. As I sewed around all of the edges (from the back of the towel), I did add in a piece of twill tape to one corner to allow the towel to be hung over a hook if desired.

Twill tape in the corner makes the towel able to be hung on a hook or knob.

Due to the bulk of the folded edge, I did have trouble getting my sewing machine to grasp and move the towel forward as I began sewing. This is what the Bernina height compensation tool is for.

Presser foot slanted up in the front causes feed dogs to not be able to advance the fabric.

In this next photo I have inserted the tool under the back of the foot (behind the start of the towel edge) which has leveled the presser foot and enabled the feed dogs to move the fabric.

Height compensation tool in place – presser foot now level.

Height compensation tool.

This tool has a swivel holding the 3 layers together which allows you to use 1, 2 or all 3 of the layers to get different thicknesses depending on what you’re sewing. I used 2 layers for these towels.

Finished towels

This was a fun project and makes a lovely gift. This cotton/linen fabric is fairly stiff when you receive it, but a quick wash turns it into a nice soft towel. I finished the edges before washing to prevent a lot of fraying that would have happened in the washer and dryer.